Republican Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.) and John McCain (Ariz.) battled on the Senate floor Tuesday over a proposed amendment to the pending defense authorization bill that could allow American citizens who are suspected of terrorism to be denied a civilian trial.

Paul argued the amendment, which is cosponsored by McCain, "puts every single American citizen at risk" and suggested that if the amendment passes, "the terrorists have won."

“Should we err today and remove some of the most important checks on state power in the name of fighting terrorism, well then the terrorists have won," Paul argued, "[D]etaining American citizens without a court trial is not American."

McCain, however, who has spent hours of floor time in the last weeks promoting his amendment, hurried to the floor to defend it against Paul's onslaught.

"Facts are stubborn things," McCain repeated from the floor several times. "If the senator from Kentucky wants to have a situation prevail where people who are released go back in to the fight to kill Americans, he is entitled to his opinion.”

The amendment, offered by McCain, who is the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, would technically allow the executive branch discretion on whether a terrorism suspect ought to be tried in civilian courts or the military tribunal system.

Paul fired back that his opposition to the amendment did not meant that he believed prisoners of war sitting in Guantánamo Bay ought to be released.

“I don't think it necessarily follows I am arguing of the release of prisoners,” Paul said. “I am simply arguing that particularly American citizens should not be sent to a foreign prison without due process.”...MORE...LINK

...Ron Paul has gotten more donations from the military than President Obama and every Republican candidate. They don't even come close to him. Dr. Paul is the Usain Bolt of military donations. Between April and June he received over $35000 dollars from the military. Mitt Romney and Herman Cain barely got $5000 dollars each. And Perry didn't even register on the scoreboard.

Below I have listed five reasons why Dr. Paul is the clear choice for President in the military's eyes.

1. Ron Paul is the candidate of peace...

2. Ron Paul is part of the military family...

3. Ron Paul is the candidate of national security and national defense...

4. Ron Paul is a true moral and fiscal conservative...

5. Ron Paul supports the rights of Vietnam Prisoners of War and military veterans of all wars...MORE...LINK -------------------------

Ron Paul is apparently coming on in Iowa, second in two Republican polls, a potential frontrunner. The media blackout may finally be ending. But the Wall Street Journal says Ron Paul's Iowa race "faces hurdle":

The problem: Mr. Paul's anti-interventionist views on foreign policy. "'That's probably the hardest part,' said Mr. Luethje [a volunteer for the Paul campaign], whose regular job is making eyeglasses. 'A lot of Republicans are of this Christian mind-set that we need to defend Israel.'"

I finally caught up with the attack that mild Bob Schieffer of CBS launched on Ron Paul uncharacteristically on his Sunday morning political show last week, for violating the creed of the new establishment on terrorism and Iran. This is nuts.

Schieffer says angrily that Paul believes that 9/11 happened because of actions the United States took. And Schieffer tells Paul he's wrong, that no report says that it is the case.

"That's exactly what the 911 commission said.... our policies definitely had an influence," Paul says. Then he states, beautifully, the case that they want to do us harm "because we're free and prosperous" is a dangerous idea.

Schieffer scoffs at the idea that we should "be nicer to Iran's leaders."

Paul: "we have 12,000 diplomats. I'm suggesting we ought to use some of them..." The Cuban missile crisis was resolved diplomatically. "We didn't say we're going to attack [Soviet Union over Cuba]... the greatest danger for us now is to overreact... Iran doesn't have a bomb, there's no proof..."

Schieffer again contradicts Paul, says that no one in our gov't is threatening military action. "May I correct you. The United States government is not going to attack Iran."

Paul's triumph: "But they say, Nothing is off the table." That means military action...MORE...LINK

Younger generations hold more liberal values than older generations regarding U.S. foreign policy. In particular, they are more likely to favor multilateralism over unilateralism and the use of diplomacy – rather than relying on military strength -- to ensure peace.

Two-thirds of Millennials (66%) say that relying too much on military force to defeat terrorism creates hatred that leads to more terrorism. A slim majority of Gen Xers (55%) agree with this sentiment, but less than half (46%) of Boomers agree and the number of Silents who share this view is 41%. A plurality of Silents (45%) believe that using overwhelming force is the best way to defeat terrorism and 43% of Boomers share that view.

There are similar divisions between Millennials and Silents on other foreign policy and national security issues. More than six-in-ten Millennials (63%) believe that the U.S. should take the interests of allies into account even if it means making compromises in foreign policy. Four-in-ten Silents share that view. Conversely, 44% of Silents believe the U.S. should follow its own interests even when allies strongly disagree; just 29% of Millennials agree.

Two-thirds of Millennials say that the best way to ensure peace is through good diplomacy. In addition, more than six-in-ten (62%) of Millennials say that it is acceptable for an individual to refuse to fight in a war that he or she believes is morally wrong; just over one third of Silents share this view...MORE...LINK

US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.

But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk."

In New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. The picture darkened still further when Wonkette and Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on "how to suppress" Occupy protests.

To Europeans, the enormity of this breach may not be obvious at first. Our system of government prohibits the creation of a federalised police force, and forbids federal or militarised involvement in municipal peacekeeping.

I noticed that rightwing pundits and politicians on the TV shows on which I was appearing were all on-message against OWS. Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a leaked memo that revealed lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy. Message coordination of this kind is impossible without a full-court press at the top. This was clearly not simply a case of a freaked-out mayors', city-by-city municipal overreaction against mess in the parks and cranky campers. As the puzzle pieces fit together, they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels.

Why this massive mobilisation against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? After all, protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. Is it really the camping? As I write, two hundred young people, with sleeping bags, suitcases and even folding chairs, are still camping out all night and day outside of NBC on public sidewalks – under the benevolent eye of an NYPD cop – awaiting Saturday Night Live tickets, so surely the camping is not the issue. I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response.

That is, until I found out what it was that OWS actually wanted.

The mainstream media was declaring continually "OWS has no message". Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online "What is it you want?" answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.

The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.

No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

When I saw this list – and especially the last agenda item – the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.

For the terrible insight to take away from news that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated a violent crackdown is that the DHS does not freelance. The DHS cannot say, on its own initiative, "we are going after these scruffy hippies". Rather, DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women's wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time)...MORE...LINK

The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing.

The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.

Saved by the bailout, bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never disclosed the details of the rescue to lawmakers even as Congress doled out more money and debated new rules aimed at preventing the next collapse.

A fresh narrative of the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 emerges from 29,000 pages of Fed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and central bank records of more than 21,000 transactions. While Fed officials say that almost all of the loans were repaid and there have been no losses, details suggest taxpayers paid a price beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger...MORE...LINK--------------------------

"And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue."

We don't live in a free enterprise or meritocratic system, we live in a state capitalist (fascist) system where the government insider-crony capitalist revolving racket picks the winners, and plies them with so much taxpayer largesse its imossible for them to lose.

From: Wes Clark and the neocon dream In 2007, the retired General described a necon "policy coup" aimed at toppling the governments of 7 countries(Salon.com) -- by Glenn Greenwald --

In October, 2007, Gen. Wesley Clark gave a speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco (seven-minute excerpt in the video below) in which he denounced what he called “a policy coup” engineered by neocons in the wake of 9/11. After recounting how a Pentagon source had told him weeks after 9/11 of the Pentagon’s plan to attack Iraq notwithstanding its non-involvement in 9/11, this is how Clark described the aspirations of the “coup” being plotted by Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and what he called “a half dozen other collaborators from the Project for the New American Century”:

Six weeks later, I saw the same officer, and asked: “Why haven’t we attacked Iraq? Are we still going to attack Iraq?”

He said: “Sir, it’s worse than that. He said – he pulled up a piece of paper off his desk – he said: “I just got this memo from the Secretary of Defense’s office. It says we’re going to attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five years – we’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.”

Clark said the aim of this plot was this: “They wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control.” He then recounted a conversation he had had ten years earlier with Paul Wolfowitz — back in 1991 — in which the then-number-3-Pentagon-official, after criticizing Bush 41 for not toppling Saddam, told Clark: “But one thing we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region – in the Middle East – and the Soviets won’t stop us. And we’ve got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet regimes – Syria, Iran [sic], Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.” Clark said he was shocked by Wolfowitz’s desires because, as Clark put it: “the purpose of the military is to start wars and change governments? It’s not to deter conflicts?”

The current turmoil in the Middle East is driven largely by popular revolts, not by neocon shenanigans. Still, in the aftermath of military-caused regime change in Iraq and Libya (the latter leading to this and this), with concerted regime change efforts now underway aimed at Syria and Iran, with active and escalating proxy fighting in Somalia, with a modest military deployment to South Sudan, and the active use of drones in six — count ‘em: six — different Muslim countries, it is worth asking whether the neocon dream as laid out by Clark is dead or is being actively pursued and fulfilled, albeit with means more subtle and multilateral than full-on military invasions (it’s worth remembering that neocons specialized in dressing up their wars in humanitarian packaging: Saddam’s rape rooms! Gassed his own people!)...MORE...LINK

Sunday, November 27, 2011

...In 2010, the Tea Party rejected the legitimacy of the DC debate, paving the way for the Occupy movement to do the same in 2011. And while those contrasting movements may compete on many issues, they share in common a rejection of Washington’s political establishment.

On Monday, the Senate will grapple with Congress’ latest bipartisan foolishness, the National Defense Authorization Act. Ironically opposed by both the White House and the Pentagon, it would expand preventive and arbitrary detention beyond Guantánamo Bay and the CIA’s shuttered black sites, importing it into the domestic United States.

The Senate Armed Services Committee, led by Senators Carl Levin (D-Michigan) and John McCain (R-Arizona), approved the bill despite its provisions for military detention of any suspect (even those apprehended within the United States) accused (not proven) of involvement in any terror-related offense. Presumably, military detention would include those accused of offenses as innocuous as "lying to a federal agent," unrelated to actual terrorism yet classified as terror-related.

The most glaring problem with the committee's legislation is its violation of our nation’s most fundamental values shared across our political spectrum.

First, the committee’s proposal accepts prosecutors as the arbiters of guilt. We have courts in America to check executive power. Impartial judges limit over whom the state may exercise its coercive power to deny freedom. We don’t trust prosecutors to make those decisions, because we presume innocence. Being considered "innocent until proven guilty" is a bedrock constitutional norm, a cornerstone in the edifice our Founders constructed to defend freedom from the potential tyranny that Levin & McCain casually invite.

On the one hand, racial and ethnic profiling in the wars on drugs, immigrants, and terror have already shredded the presumption of innocence. Millions of Americans routinely treated as presumptively guilty due to their race or ethnicity have been subjected to illegitimate prison sentences or deportation. But at least those cases involve a judicial process of some kind.

A separate fundamental principle restrains the military from operating domestically. Levin and McCain invite domestic military deployment.

Beyond its blatant violation of fundamental American principles, Levin and McCain also play loose with the system. Their bill passed the Armed Services Committee essentially in secret, without even a single hearing on their radical and seemingly Soviet-inspired proposal.

Moreover, their committee overstepped its jurisdiction, invading the spheres of the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees. Senators Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and Dianne Feinstein (D-California), who chair those committees, raised their voices in protest--and Senator Mark Udall (D-Utah) introduced an amendment that would reverse Levin-McCain’s detention provisions. Even within a single, insular, tone deaf political party, the left and right hands actively work at cross purposes.

Republican complicity in Sino-Chinese inspired security policies, like the Patriot Act, is by now well established. The support from some Democrats for this proposal, however, reflects what is wrong with Washington--beyond policy...MORE...LINK-------------------------Deep-seated malice and totalitarian misanthropy lie just below the surface for "grandfatherly" Zionist ghouls McCain and Levin

From: The Hillary Moment President Obama can't win by running a constructive campaign, and he won't be able to govern if he does win a second term..(Wall Street Journal) -- by PATRICK H. CADDELL AND DOUGLAS E. SCHOEN --

When Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson accepted the reality that they could not effectively govern the nation if they sought re-election to the White House, both men took the moral high ground and decided against running for a new term as president. President Obama is facing a similar reality—and he must reach the same conclusion.

He should abandon his candidacy for re-election in favor of a clear alternative, one capable not only of saving the Democratic Party, but more important, of governing effectively and in a way that preserves the most important of the president's accomplishments. He should step aside for the one candidate who would become, by acclamation, the nominee of the Democratic Party: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Never before has there been such an obvious potential successor—one who has been a loyal and effective member of the president's administration, who has the stature to take on the office, and who is the only leader capable of uniting the country around a bipartisan economic and foreign policy.

Certainly, Mr. Obama could still win re-election in 2012. Even with his all-time low job approval ratings (and even worse ratings on handling the economy) the president could eke out a victory in November. But the kind of campaign required for the president's political survival would make it almost impossible for him to govern—not only during the campaign, but throughout a second term.

Put simply, it seems that the White House has concluded that if the president cannot run on his record, he will need to wage the most negative campaign in history to stand any chance. With his job approval ratings below 45% overall and below 40% on the economy, the president cannot affirmatively make the case that voters are better off now than they were four years ago. He—like everyone else—knows that they are worse off...MORE...LINK

...The police behavior at U.C. Davis -- manifestly not "rogue-cop," a trained, planned exercise -- reveals the cool military thinking behind the operation. Pepper-spraying looked surgical, preemptive, even robotic. The strategic directive must have been to conserve police effort and maintain police maneuverability at virtually any cost. Such efficiencies and capabilities would be important in a riot; they're not important when hoping to evict unarmed, seated protesters. It's not as if officers have been resorting to battle gear under otherwise unmanageable pressure or initiating violence only as a last resort. They've been arriving in battle gear. They've been construing noncompliance as potential attack. They've moved preemptively to disable attack where none existed, not just trying to evict but seemingly hoping to inspire fear, to punish and defeat.

The mood these operations convey is that failure to achieve police objectives must result in something awful for the body politic. In reality, leaving citizens sitting around a park or campus a few more days, even possibly illegally, might be frustrating for police and others; it's hardly the end of the world. Sometimes taking a few deep breaths is the only thing to do. But military training, tactics, and weaponry seem to inspire the idea in civic strategists that failure to achieve an objective is tantamount to fatal defeat by a hostile enemy. Intolerable. Not an option.

That mentality tends to place American governments at enmity with their dissident citizens -- and vice versa. The fact that much militarizing of police, over the past twenty years, has federal sources raises endlessly complicated questions that reflect strangely on the histories of American federalism and government suppression. A horrific theme of the Civil Rights Movement was police violence, and many Americans have branded on their brains the watercannons, clubs, dogs, fists, and boots used against nonviolent protesters in the 1950s; police involved were generally state and local. Then in 1957 federal troops -- the 101st Airborne Paratroopers -- entered Little Rock, Arkansas, with fixed bayonets, to enforce federal law by ensuring the entry of African American students to state school there; states-rights advocates talked about federal overreaching and police state, the end of liberty. Then again, in the 1960s and '70s the federal government, via its law-enforcement arm the FBI, carried out a covert war -- involving assassination, it's fairly uncontroversial to say -- on the militant activist group the Black Panthers, who it's fairly uncontroversial to say were not always peaceful protesters.

Responding now to police efforts against demonstrators, liberals and leftists have begun raising anew the issue of inappropriate police militarization and violence. Yet it's the libertarian right that has done much of the reporting and research on the issue in recent decades (Democracy Now! is among left-liberal institutions that have also covered the issue for many years). The current state of heightened awareness means there's a possibly interesting opportunity for people of varying backgrounds and politics to begin a new conversation. That conversation would involve some very strange bedfellows -- and might spark new enmities. The Salon columnist Joan Walsh's suggestion last weekend on Twitter that if police violence has federal sources, then President Obama bears some responsibility set off a torrent of invective violent even by Twitter standards...MORE...LINK

Thursday, November 24, 2011

President Obama’s refusal to rule out military action against Iran — and GOP contender Mitt Romney’s recent threat of war against Iran — should appall anyone who believes, with the free-market liberal Ludwig von Mises, that “not war, but peace, is the father of all things.”

If the U.S. government or its client state Israel were to attack Iran, all hell would break loose. Thousands of Iranians would die. That country’s infrastructure would be destroyed, bringing even more death, disease, and misery. And the democratic Iranian Green Movement, which is against foreign intervention, would be destroyed. Iran’s government would retaliate by closing down the Strait of Hormuz, through which much oil passes, and launching attacks against American ground and naval forces in the region.

In short, disaster would follow a U.S. attack or an Israeli attack — which would be seen, quite rationally, as a U.S.-backed operation.

What would prompt the military assault? The powers that be, in maneuvers reminiscent of the buildup to the Iraq war, are trying to frighten the world into believing that Iran is building a nuclear weapon. Recent headlines in the stenographic news media would have us believe that the International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that the Iranians are working apace to build a bomb. We are left with the suggestion that once they succeed, a nuclear attack will promptly follow.

This makes little sense. Why would Iran launch a nuclear attack that would mean certain oblivion for itself? The U.S. government can destroy the world with its nukes, and Israel, a nuclear power since the 1960s, has a couple of hundred warheads ready to go. Unlike Iran, Israel does not submit to IAEA inspections.

If Iran were developing a nuclear weapon, it would clearly be in order to deter the sort of regime change that occurred in Iraq and Libya. The difference between how the U.S. government treated those countries and how it treats North Korea, which has a nuclear weapon, is hard to miss.

But here’s the bigger problem for those ginning up war fever: There is no evidence Iran is developing a nuclear weapon! Iran is being threatened because it can’t prove it’s not doing so.

Two U.S. National Intelligence Estimates, one in 2007 and one in 2011, judged that Iran shut down its nuclear weapons program in 2003. (NIEs represent the judgment of America’s dozen-and-a-half intelligence agencies.)

But what about the most recent IAEA report? According to the Washington Post,

Intelligence provided to U.N. nuclear officials shows that Iran’s government has mastered the critical steps needed to build a nuclear weapon, receiving assistance from foreign scientists to overcome key technical hurdles, according to Western diplomats and nuclear experts briefed on the findings.

Yet if one digs below the surface, one finds that the IAEA certified that Iran has not diverted nuclear materials from peaceful to military purposes. (Uranium appropriate for medical or power-generating purposes is unsuitable for making bombs.) While the report darkly alludes to “undeclared nuclear materials,” it provides no evidence that they exist...

The Obama administration says it prefers sanctions and diplomacy, but as long as Iran is required to prove a negative, the chance of war is real. The American military opposes it — Iran would make Iraq look like a schoolyard — yet Obama, Romney, and other prominent political figures rattle their sabers. This is sheer madness...MORE...LINK

From: What Endless War looks like U.S. officials simultaneously announce that we're defeating Al Qaeda and they'll be a major threat "for years"(Salon.com) -- by Glenn Greenwald --

Anonymous U.S. officials this morning are announcing in The Washington Post that they have effectively defeated what they call “the organization that brought us 9/11″ — Al Qaeda — by rendering it “operationally ineffective.” Specifically, “the leadership ranks of the main al-Qaeda terrorist network have been reduced to just two figures whose demise would mean the group’s defeat, U.S. counterterrorism and intelligence officials said.” And: “asked what exists of al-Qaeda’s leadership group beyond the top two positions, the official said: ‘Not very much’.”

You might think this means that the vastly expanded National Security and Surveillance States justified in the name of 9/11, as well as the slew of wars and other aggressive deployments which it spawned, can now be reversed and wound down. After all, the stated purpose of the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) which provided legal cover to all of this was expressed in the very first line: “To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.” The purpose of this authorized force was equally clear and limited: “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons [the President] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.”

Now, the group which the U.S. government has always said was the one that “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001″ is, according to this same government, “operationally ineffective.” So what does that mean in terms of policy? Absolutely nothing:

U.S. officials stressed that al-Qaeda’s influence extends far beyond its operational reach, meaning that the terrorist group will remain a major security threat for years.

Not just a threat — but a major security threat — “for years” to come. In fact, it turns out that the version of Al Qaeda that the U.S. just spent the last decade “defeating” on the ground that it perpetrated 9/11 does not even really matter: “U.S. counterterrorism officials now assess al-Qaeda’s offshoot in Yemen as a significantly greater threat.” Even in Pakistan, where the “effectively inoperable” group is based, the CIA refuses even to reduce its activities: “letting up now could allow them to regenerate,” an anonymous official decreed. And if that’s not enough to keep your fear levels sufficiently high to support (or at least acquiesce to) more militarism, there is always this: “The arrest this week of an alleged al-Qaeda sympathizer in New York underscored the group’s ability to inspire ‘lone wolf’ attacks.”

That last bit about the “lone wolf” refers to the scary Terrorist Super-Villain, Jose Pimental, caught and unveiled at a dramatic Press Conference this week by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: a Terrorist even more hapless and inept than the failed Texan used car salesman whose chronic inability to find his keys didn’t prevent him from being recruited as a dastardly Terrorist Mastermind by Iran’s elite Quds Force. This latest frightening lone wolf menace, according to The New York Times, “had little money to speak of, was unable to pay his cellphone bill and scrounged for money to buy the drill bits that court papers said he required to make his pipe bombs” and, furthermore, “had trouble drilling the small holes that needed to be made in the metal tubes.” Also, he “lived with his uncle in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood after his mother threw him out recently, appears to be unstable, according to several of the people briefed on the case, three of whom said he had tried to circumcise himself.”

Even the FBI — which specializes in converting hapless Muslim youth into Terrorists and then providing the planning, funding and training for the attacks, so they can jump in at the last minute and heroically disrupt the plots they themselves created — refused to get involved in this case out of “concern that the informer might have played too active a role in helping Mr. Pimentel.” In other words, even the Supreme Entrapers known as the FBI “were concerned that the case raised some entrapment questions” and “wondered whether Mr. Pimentel had the even small amount of money or technical know-how necessary to produce a pipe bomb on his own, had he not received help from the informer.” Also: they’re worried because many of Pimental’s recorded statements were made as he smoked marijuana with the NYPD’s informer as he guided Pimental to attack and instructed him how to do it.

I’m sure we can all agree that we must endure years more of civil liberties assaults, endless war, bulging military budgets, suffocating government secrecy, a sprawling surveillance regime, and the slaughter of countless more Muslim children in order to save ourselves from this existential Lone Wolf threat. And that’s to say nothing of the fact that endless war, drone attacks, occupying countries, and engineering regime change is precisely what causes and fuels these threats in the first place...MORE...LINK

In a February meeting of the tea party, caucus chair Rep. Michele Bachmann said, according to Politico: "It is my hope that the tea party caucus will serve as... the best way to get America on a sound fiscal path that adheres to the Constitutional principles on which she was founded."

This past summer, the tea party members fought so valiantly to keep the Obama administration from additional deficit spending, so much so that Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa) had the insensitivity to proclaim, "This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money." Not long after wrongfully being labeled terrorists, the tea party was bullied by statements from the Obama administration that Social Security and Medicare could be in danger if their persistence on limiting spending continued.

In the end what most of us know, and what the tea party knew back in February, is that spending is the disease that is causing America to lose credibility and economic prosperity -- not our $3 trillion in annual tax revenue. Social Security and Medicare checks would have still been sent, though perhaps we would have had to cut the $3 billion in annual foreign aid to Pakistan.

The various economic plans offered by Republican candidates propose some cuts to spending, and tea party members will think this is good move for the country. Gov. Mitt Romney's plan only cuts about $30 billion in the first year, and Rick Perry's plan proposes cuts of about $100 billion.

However, only one candidate for president offers a plan that seems to embody the heart and soul of the tea party caucus -- Texas Congressman Ron Paul and his Trillion Dollar plan. Logically, tea party members would back the plan that achieves a balanced budget most aggressively since a balanced budget is the Holy Grail of tea party members.

Paul's plan boldly cuts $1 trillion in the first year and returns America to a balanced budget in his first term as president. Even more astounding is that the budget cuts come from senseless government waste and federal government duplicity, like maintaining active military bases in foreign countries a half-century after the end of the war. Paul achieves a balanced budget in just three years while keeping the government's promise to those receiving Social Security and Medicare benefits...LINK

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

The following is from an interview with GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum in which he favorably compares Israel's contemporary behavior with events in the mid-1800's.

The man might as well be a Neanderthal, completely lost in time and space.

This just goes to show the danger of the primitive, Zionist mindset, which simply doesn't evolve, and is forever caught glorifying a brutish, tribal past.

With the world today facing unprecedented challenges in terms of population explosions, limited resources, and potential nuclear conflicts, the last thing we need is these anachronistic, stunted, Old Testament-worshippers attempting to impose Iron Age Jewish tribal morality on a 21st century world.

In a recorded conversation during a Friday campaign stop in Iowa, former Republican senator Rick Santorum offered a surprisingly hawkish set of foreign policy views (even for Santorum) on both Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After telling a questioner that the U.S. should target Iranian nuclear scientists for assassination, the GOP presidential hopeful went on to say that “all the people who live in the West Bank are Israelis, they’re not Palestinians” and offered his endorsement of Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank.

Santorum even went so far as to compare Israeli annexation of the West Bank to the acquisition of Texas during the Mexican-American war:

QUESTIONER: Do you think Israel should dismantle its settlements?

SANTORUM: No. The West Bank, is this part of Israel?

QUESTIONER: [inaudible] According to 48? [inaudible][...]

SANTORUM: How did we get New Mexico and Texas?

QUESTIONER: Through war.

SANTORUM: How did they get the West Bank? [inaudible] Through a war. Should we give Texas back to Mexico?

QUESTIONER: Well I don’t think you should recognize recent annexations.

SANTORUM: Oh, so it depends whether it’s recent or not? So we should have given New Mexico and Texas back 150 years go?[...]

The bottom line is that that is legitimately Israeli country. And they have a right to do within their country just like we have a right to do within our country. If they want to negotiate with Israelis, and all the people who live in the West Bank are Israelis, they’re not Palestinians. This is Israeli land..."

If Santorum is endorsing a one-state solution, and there is no other way to interpret his comments, he should elaborate on whether the current Arab residents of the West Bank — a people he refuses to call Palestinians — should receive the full voting rights and freedom of movement afforded to Israeli citizens...MORE...LINK

The most recent GOP foreign policy debate revealed the depraved and deluded state of America’s political class. There was a time when U.S. presidents sought plausible deniability for things like torture and assassination; now such sordid practices are openly supported by candidates seeking the country’s highest elected office.

Several candidates were asked their opinion regarding waterboarding. Herman Cain said that he was against torture, but that he believed waterboarding to be an “enhanced interrogation technique” and therefore permissible. Michele Bachmann indicated she would authorize waterboarding. Rick Perry also supported it, saying, “This is war. That’s what happens in war. And I am for using the techniques, not torture, but using those techniques that we know will extract the information to save young American lives. And I will be for it until I die.”

Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman, to their credit, came out unequivocally against waterboarding, with Paul calling it illegal and immoral. When asked directly what he thought constituted torture, Paul said “waterboarding is torture.”

Paul is correct. Waterboarding is torture. It is an interrogation technique that causes severe pain in the form of reflexive choking and gagging. Subjects are strapped to a board, and their heads are covered. Water is then poured over their faces. The subjects cannot breathe through the mouth or nose, and death will occur if the procedure is not interrupted.

Now, torture is illegal under U.S. and international law. It is also banned by the Geneva Convention on Torture, a treaty to which the United States is a signatory. President Ronald Reagan signed it in 1988, and the U.S. Senate ratified it in 1994; it therefore has the force of law in the United States. By advocating an interrogation technique which is clearly torture, Cain, Perry, and Bachmann are supporting the violation of the very law they would be sworn to uphold should one of them win the presidency.

When the subject of assassination came up, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich signaled their strong support. Gingrich elaborated, “If you engage in war against the United States, you are an enemy combatant. You have none of the civil liberties in the United States, you cannot go to court."

On this point, Gingrich is simply wrong. When an American citizen is accused of waging war against the United States, he stands accused of treason. Treason is specifically mentioned in the Constitution under article III, section 3, which reads, “Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.”

The mere accusation of treason (or terrorism) does not relieve government officials of their obligation to abide by the law, which requires due process.

Romney and Gingrich are essentially supporting the position taken by the Obama administration, which asserts that the executive branch has the authority to kill any person they claim is a really bad person (i.e., “enemy combatant” or “terrorist”) without having to go through the inconvenience and expense of following the Constitution.

Paul condemned the policy of assassinating alleged terrorists and pointed out the cognitive dissonance afflicting those who think the government shouldn’t run the health-care system, yet somehow believe it should be entrusted with the power to kill U.S. citizens without due process. As Paul said, “You want to live within the law and obey the law. Because otherwise, it's going to be very bad for all of us.”...MORE...LINK

Monday, November 21, 2011

The answer is that many of the Tea Partiers have access to guns, Obama would have been accused of neo-communist totalitarianism, and the right is more sympathetic to the Zio-fascism that has Obama and the idiotic and corrupt Democratic Party in a stranglehold due to its own greed, nihilism and stupidity.

Remember, bullies are cowards who always pick on those they percieve as weak and unable to fight back. The same goes for fascists, neo-fascists, Zionists, etc., and other brands of totalitarianism. -- C.M.

The following is a comprehensive case that Israel and its Diaspora Jewish nationalist agents and operatives, along with Zionist sympathisers and collaborators, instigated, implemented and enabled the 9/11 terrorist attacks (which were used as the casus belli to lie America into multiple Mideast wars) and the subsequent official cover ups and investigatory whitewashes.

The article additionally alludes to involvement by elements of the CIA.

It is a very convincing account, and the Zionist "inside job" explanation is really the only theory that makes any kind of logical, rational, historical and political sense.

My interest in this is not in "scapegoating" anyone, but rather getting to the root of the treasonous, neo-fascist elements that have taken over the federal government, American democratic institutions, and many of the U.S.'s most influential and powerful private institutions. And make no mistake -- the Jewish Zionists would never have been able to pull off any of this without the knowledge, assistance and willing ignorance of large factions of both the Republican and Democratic parties, and the mass movements that support them.

These mass movements, what I refer to shorthand as liberal fascism on the left and neoconservatism and Judeo-Christian Zionism on the right, are just as morally, intellectually, spiritually and historically bankrupt, corrupt and sociopathic as are the Judeofascists at their core.

Indeed, what has happened in America is that the Jewish Zionists first seduced and infiltrated the "soft target," gullible and naive, female-like Democratic Party, and moved into the harder-boiled, "manly" GOP via neoconservatism. They triangulated each, and then synthesized or merged the two into one large, Zionist-serving leviathan.

This infiltration, subversion and domination for self-serving purposes is the modus-operandi of the Jewish Zionist nation at least since the Marxist-Trotskyite Jewish Bolsheviks, and really seems to be the nature and character of the organized Jewish ethno-religious ideology and identity in its entirety for millenia -- an organic manifestation of its doctrine, dogma and (insane, bankrupt) "moral" perspective, which is the antithesis of traditional Greco-Christian ethics and morality.

This organized Jewish history and behavior, available for anyone who bothered to look beyond the vanilla historical narratives fabricated by Zionists themselves, and by elements in the U.S. federal government and its various intellectual lackeys from left to right at least since the end of World War II, and Zionism's ability to easily infiltrate and co-opt modern American institutions is how we know that the modern U.S. political establishment is decrepit, corrupt and depraved beyond any possibility for salvation, redemption or long-term viability.

Ron Paul is perhaps one of a handful of members of Congress and Washington elites who aren't corrupt to the point of volitional evil, but even he has his hands largely tied by the Zionists and their cowardly and borderline insane lackeys.

But make no mistake, this kind of intellectual and moral depravity and corruption will eventually collapse under the weight of its own evil, and when it does, the heavens will call for a justice not seen since the American and French revolutions -- and America and the world will yield to their demands, damn the torpedoes.

The clock is ticking on these Judeofascists and their sick, depraved political lackeys, and it grows louder in their coursing, throbbing, squirming brains by the day.

This guilty knowledge, like Lady McBeth's guilty conscience, will eventually drive them to final madness and stark raving insanity, wherein they will tumble over like the dry-rotted edifices they are with not much more than the slightest push.

All we need is righteousness, a steadfast dedication to truth, a culture of defiance, and the courage of our convictions to make it happen.

When an event occurs that that fundamentally changes the dynamics of global geopolitics, there is one question above all others whose answer will most assuredly point to its perpetrators. That question is "Cui bono?". If those so indicted are in addition found to have had both motive and means then, as they say in the US, it's pretty much a slam-dunk.

And so it is with the events of 9/11.

Discounting the 'Official narrative' as the absurdity it so clearly is, there are just two organisations on the entire planet with the expertise, assets, access and political protection necessary to have both executed 9/11 and effected its cover-up to date (ie the means). Both are Intelligence Agencies - the CIA and Israel's Mossad - but only one had a compelling motive - Mossad. That motive dovetailed perfectly with the Neocon PNAC agenda, with it's explicitly stated need for "...a catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor" [1] in order to mobilise US public opinion for already planned wars, the effects of which would be to destroy Israel's enemies.

This article marshals evidence for the proposition that "Israel did it"...MORE...LINK

Thursday, November 17, 2011

From: White House shooter has “Israel” tattoo(By Rehmat calling) -- While all GOP presidential hopefuls with the exception of Ron Paul, are calling Obama to attack Iran for Israel – the Pennsylvania State police on Wednesday arrested Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, 21, for allegedly shooting at the White House. However, the Zionist-controlled mainstream media ignored the news because the shooter has “Israel” tattoo on left side of his neck.

The Park Police, the authority in the area of the National Mall, found evidence, including a gun and spent shells, in a vehicle abandoned several blocks away that led to Ortega’s arrest warrant.

Photos of a bearded Ortega pictured outdoors and smiling, and showing his “Israel” tattoo in a flowery script, appear on the US Park Police web posting on November 11, 2011.

The US Secret Service on Tuesday discovered two bullets that hit the White House. One was lodged in a protected glass window on the residential level.

Both Barack Obama and his wife were out of country at the time of the shooting.

I’m glad, the Jewish Lobby cannot pin this terrorist act on Iran...

Israel operates it largest espionage network in United States, the very country which has donated trillions of dollars to the Zionist entity since 1960s and has shielded its crimes against humanity at international forums since 1948. In addition to Katya (Jewish spies), Israel also maintains over one million Sayanin (local Jewish collaborators who works for Israeli espionage network) around the world...MORE...LINK---------

The United States Park Police is seeking the public’s help in locating a wanted person.

On November 11, 2011 at about 9:30 pm, the US Park Police investigated a sound of shots fired in the 1600 block of Constitution Avenue NW Washington, DC. This is between the White House and the Washington Monument.

As the investigation unfolded, the US Park Police located a vehicle in the 2300 block of Constitution Avenue. Evidence in the vehicle le to us obtaining an arrest warrant for Oscar Ortega

We are seeking help in locating:

Oscar Ramiro ORTEGA

21 year old

White Hispanic Male

5’11”

160 pounds

Medium Build

Brown eyes

Black hair

His right hand has a tattoo of three dots, he has a tattoo stating “Ortega” on his upper back, a tattoo on his right chest of rosary beads and hands clasped in prayer, a tattoo of folded hands on left chest, and the words “Israel” tattooed on left side of neck.

Anyone with information is asked to contact local law enforcement or US Park Police at (202) 610-7500 for immediate assistance, or the Criminal Investigations Branch Tip Line at (202) 610-8737 for non emergent information...MORE...LINK -------------------------

This reminds me a lot of the case of Bruce Ivins. Not all of these dangerous, Jewish supremacist, Judeo-Christian Zionists are evangelicals. A few are of Catholic background. -- C.M.

"Bruce Edwards Ivins (April 22, 1946 – July 29, 2008)[1] was an American microbiologist, vaccinologist, senior biodefense researcher at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Maryland and the key suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks.

"On Tuesday, July 29, 2008 he died of an overdose of Tylenol in an apparent suicide after learning that criminal charges were likely to be filed against him by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for an alleged criminal connection to the 2001 anthrax attacks...

"Ivins was a Roman Catholic. The Frederick News-Post has made public several letters to the editor written by Ivins dealing with his religious views.[32] These were cited in the Department of Justice summary of the case against Ivins as suggesting that he may have harbored a grudge against pro-choice Catholic senators Daschle and Leahy, recipients of anthrax mailings.[33] In a letter expressing his belief that Jews were God's chosen people, Ivins stated, "By blood and faith, Jews are God's chosen, and have no need for 'dialogue' with any gentile."[34] Ivins praised a rabbi for refusing a dialogue with a Muslim cleric..."

Questions about the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS’s) potential involvement in the violent crackdowns on Occupy Wall Street protests nationwide continue to grow today, with new reports that not only were they sighted at several of the crackdowns but in one case photographic evidence of DHS forces arresting a photographer at a Portland rally.

The photograph apparently is authentic, as the Federal Protective Service (FPS), a wing of the DHS, issued a statement in the wake of the Portland crackdown confirming that they were “working with the Portland Police Bureau to enforce the prohibition of overnight encampments.”

That crackdown was comparatively minor compared to the increasing level of violence used in recent days, an apparent result of what Oakland Mayor Jean Quan called a “conference call” with other mayors.

There has been speculation and even one unconfirmed report that the “conference call” was organized by the DHS, as were the crackdowns in their wake. So far, however, there has been no formal confirmation that this was the case.

The FPS is supposed to be responsible for the physical security of certain federal buildings, and does so mostly with a massive team of 15,000 security contractors. They have recently hyped a program of “proactive” moves against potential future threats against facilities, which may suggest why they are being used against domestic unrest, even if on a small scale basis...LINK

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

People, especially in the establishment media, tend to shy away from using the word “conspiracy” as it has become a bit of a dirty word associated with tin foil hats and less-than-sane individuals.

However, this is a time when the word conspiracy must be applied, given that leaders from 18 cities across the United States had a conference call immediately before the nationwide raids on Occupy Wall Street encampments occurred.

These leaders clearly conspired to create a coordinated assault on Occupations across the nation and surprisingly Oakland Mayor Jean Quan seems to have admitted such outright.

During an interview with the BBC which was aired in part on The Takeaway with John Hockenberry and Celeste Headlee, Quan admitted that she was in a conference call with leaders of 18 cities across the county.

You can hear the excerpt here starting at around 5:30.

“I was recently on a conference call with 18 cities across the country who had the same situation,” Quan said in the interview...

Apparently Quan doesn’t realize that the Occupiers are citizens and members of the public and thus the police action is infringing on the public’s right to use the park.

Based on Quan’s statement regarding the conference call, I do not think it is out of the realm of possibility that indeed 18 cities conspired to coordinate crackdowns in an attempt to discourage the movement.

The close temporal relationship between many of the crackdowns nationwide has been similarly questionable, especially the nature of the raids which occur late at night or early in the morning with little to no warning and with brutal police action.

It is also interesting to note that there has seemingly been an attempt to prevent coverage of the raids, especially in Zucotti Park where they corralled journalists in order to keep them from entering the park and properly covering the raid.

One blog also questioned the strangely coincidental timing of the raids given Obama’s lengthy trip to the Pacific Rim which began just days before the nationwide assault.

A commenter said, “It had that “while the cat’s away” flavor to it,” which I think is a bit misleading, as it gives the impression that Obama wouldn’t stand behind the crackdowns.

Even if Obama pretended to care about the police raids, he would do absolutely nothing about it as his entire political career has been carried out on the backs of the same people the Occupy movement is fighting against.

A point that must be highlighted is that Obama – who pretends, laughably I might add, to be a man of the people – actually receives more in Wall Street funds than even the outright corporate shills of the Republican party.

This is a perfect example of how the supposed two party system is nothing more than a sham meant to divide and conquer the public while misleading them as to who really runs the country.

In reality, we live in a country where the two parties serve the same masters with the same goals in mind: robbing the American people while waging wars for profit, abusing human rights around the world, keeping total control over the populous and controlling the political system for the benefit of corporations and the financial industry.

In order for the Occupy Wall Street movement to make a big impact, we need to spread this truth far and wide and stop buying into the entire false dichotomy that we are enslaved by.

If you’re a conservative, a real conservative that is, you should be able to see right through the GOP’s ludicrous platform and their attempts at painting themselves as conservatives.

If you’re a liberal, a real liberal that is, you should also be able to see past the buffer of liberalism presented by the Democrats that only serves to hide their true agenda which is inseparable from the Republican’s...MORE...LINK-------------------------

Chris Moore comments:

There is no longer any question that both "opposition" parties are on the same Big Government, State Capitalist, Federal Reserve/Wall Street lackey, neo-fascist team.

For all of those lefties who don't think there's any such thing as liberal fascism, why is Obama's federal government coordinating these violent crackdowns?

And all those righties who think the neocons and establishment GOP are conservatives and not fascists, why are they all in bed with the State Capitalist, Big Government Fed, and engaged in wars for profit?

Any Tea Partiers dumb enough to believe they're not next if they exercise their free speech rights a bit more aggressively are delusional.

The only reason they're cracking liberal skull in the cities is because they know these lefties aren't armed. But ultimately, even an armed citizenry is no match for the federal government.

Ron Paul is the only answer as an initial step in ending this neo-fascism and creeping totalitarianism.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

New York police have dismantled the Occupy Wall Street camp in Zuccotti Park and arrested about 200 people following a raid in the early hours.

Protesters were ordered to leave at about 01:00 (06:00 GMT), before police began removing tents and property.

The New York camp was set up in September to protest against economic inequality - it inspired similar demonstrations around the world.

It was the latest camp to be cleared by police in US cities in recent days.

Legal challenge

Following Tuesday's eviction, a New York state judge issued an order ruling protesters could return to the park, pending a hearing at 11:30 (16:30 GMT).

But the city's Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the park would remain closed while officials reviewed the legal situation.

In a news conference, Mr Bloomberg said there was a conflict between protecting public health and safety and protesters' First Amendment rights.

"Unfortunately, the park was becoming a place where people came not to protest, but rather to break laws, and in some cases, to harm others," Mr Bloomberg said...

"The First Amendment gives every New Yorker the right to speak out - but it does not give anyone the right to sleep in a park or otherwise take it over to the exclusion of others."

Police in New York gave an announcement as their operation began, telling protesters: "The city has determined that the continued occupation of Zuccotti Park poses an increasing health and fire safety hazard."

Leaflets were handed out telling occupants to "immediately remove all private property" and warning they would be arrested if they interfered with the operation...

The area around the park was sealed off and journalists were prevented from entering. Some of the activists accused police of using excessive force and pepper spray.

Police spokesman Paul Browne said most people left the park when ordered, but that a small group of people had refused.

The 200 or so people arrested included some who had chained themselves together...

The city authorities and Mayor Bloomberg had come under pressure from residents and businesses to shut down the camp, which had about 200 occupants as it neared its two-month anniversary.

There had been plans for a street carnival to descend on Wall Street on Thursday in an attempt to shut it down, to mark the camp's two-month anniversary.

By daylight the camp had been entirely cleared, a step welcomed by some local businesses.

"I support them but we have to work, not do revolution," a juice stall vendor told the AFP news agency. "I don't support revolution or idleness. Idleness is not good for our country."

But activists released a statement saying that while they may have been physically removed, "you can't evict an idea whose time has come"...MORE...LINK-----------------------

Chris Moore comments:

Michael Bloomberg, what a disgusting commissar coward, ordering the police crackdown in the middle of the night to catch protesters by surprise and prevent the media from covering the brutality.

In an earlier life, he must have been a Jewish Bolshevik commissar. Now, like his neocon brethren, he’s morphed into naked Zionist fascism.

Prior to last night’s GOP foreign policy debate, the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Think Progress blog — which has several good and independent commentators who do excellent work — announced that it had compiled a list of “what you won’t hear at tonight’s GOP foreign policy debate: Obama’s successes.” It is very worth reviewing what this self-proclaimed progressive site now — under a Democratic President – considers to be a “foreign policy success,” beginning with this:

As I pointed out just yesterday, many Democrats not only passively acquiesce to Obama’s continuation of core Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies, but enthusiastically cheer it as proof that they, too, can be Tough and Strong (manly virtues demonstrated by how many human beings their leader kills from afar). So here you have Think Progress heaping praise on Obama for seizing what is literally the most radical power a President can seize: the power to target — in total secrecy and with no checks or due process — their fellow citizens for execution: specifically, assassination-by-CIA. Worse, to justify what Obama has done, TP spouts a blatant falsehood (that Awlaki was “a senior Al Qaeda leader”), even though actual Yemen experts have mocked that claim mercilessly and the administration itself refuses to reveal any evidence whatsoever about what it did or why. Revealingly, TP trumpets the claim that “Al Awlaki’s death brought a damaging blow to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)”; its link to justify that claim goes to the blog operated by the right-wing Heritage Foundation: that, quite understandably, is who TP must now cite as authoritative to justify Obama’s foreign policy conduct.

But what’s most notable here is how inaccurate TP’s prediction was: it turned out to be completely wrong that the Awlaki assassination was something “you won’t hear at tonight’s GOP foreign policy debate.” In fact, we heard a lot about it — from the GOP candidates who heaped as much praise on Obama as TP did for murdering this American citizen. Indeed, among the most vocal cheers of the night from the GOP South Carolina crowd — second only to its vocal swooning for the virtues of waterboarding — was when their right-wing candidates hailed Obama’s decision to kill Awlaki.

Michele Bachmann gushed about Obama’s decision this way: “Awlaki, who we also killed, he has been the chief recruiter of terrorists, including Major Hassan at Fort Hood, including the underwear bomber over Detroit, and including the Times Square bomber. These were very good decisions that were made to take them out.”...

It took Ron Paul — whom every Good Progressive will tell you is Completely Crazy and Insane — to point out to the GOP the rather glaring inconsistency between, on the one hand, distrusting government authorities to run health care, but on the other, wanting to empower the President to kill whomever he wants with no transparency or due process...MORE...LINK

“Talkin’ about my generation”: the Who song once expressed the hope and self confidence of the Baby Boomers as they reached biological if not emotional maturity. It was an attack on the older generation, a defense of the young, but it includes an ominous refrain: “Hope I die before I get old.” Already, perhaps, the shadow of generational failure hung over the twenty something Boomers. Those shadows have darkened considerably as the Boomer sun moves past the meridian and an unmistakable air of twilight infiltrates into the declining hours of the long Boomer day.

Talking about our generation is not going to be as much fun for the Boomers as it was in those long distant days of infinite promise. My generation has some real accomplishments under its belt, especially in the worlds of science and technology. And we made important progress in making American society a more open place for people and groups who were once excluded. In every field of American life, there are Boomers who have made and are making important, selfless contributions: in hospitals, in classrooms, in government, in business, in the military. You name it and we are there.

But at the level of public policy and moral leadership, as a generation we have largely failed. The Boomer Progressive Establishment in particular has been a huge disappointment to itself and to the country. The political class slumbered as the entitlement and pension crisis grew to ominous dimensions. Boomer financial leadership was selfish and shortsighted, by and large. Boomer CEOs accelerated the trend toward unlimited greed among corporate elites, and Boomer members of corporate boards sit by and let it happen. Boomer academics created a profoundly dysfunctional system that systemically shovels resources upward from students and adjuncts to overpaid administrators and professors who by and large have not, to say the least, done an outstanding job of transmitting the cultural heritage of the past to future generations. Boomer Hollywood execs created an amoral morass of sludge — and maybe I’m missing something, but nobody spends a lot of time talking about the towering cultural accomplishments of the world historical art geniuses of the Boomer years. Boomer greens enthusiastically bet their movement on the truly idiotic drive for a global carbon treaty; they are now grieving over their failure to make any measurable progress after decades spent and hundreds of millions of dollars thrown away. On the Boomer watch the American family and the American middle class entered major crises; by the time the Boomers have finished with it the health system will be an unaffordable and dysfunctional tangle — perhaps the most complicated, expensive and poorly designed such system in the history of the world.

All of this was done by a generation that never lost its confidence that it was smarter, better educated and more idealistic than its Depression-surviving, World War-winning, segregation-ending, prosperity-building parents. We didn’t need their stinking faith, their stinking morals, or their pathetically conformist codes of moral behavior. We were better than that; after all, we grokked Jefferson Airplane, achieved nirvana on LSD and had a spiritual wealth and sensitivity that our boorish bourgeois forbears could not grasp. They might be doers, builders and achievers — but we Boomers grooved, man, we had sex in the park, we grew our hair long, and we listened to sexy musical lyrics about drugs that those pathetic old losers could not even understand.

What the Boomers as a generation missed (there were, of course and thankfully, many honorable individual exceptions) was the core set of values that every generation must discover to make a successful transition to real adulthood: maturity...MORE...LINK -------------------------

Chris Moore comments:

The biggest mistake the Boomers made (and the Silent Generation immediately before them) was allowing the self-serving Judeofascists to infiltrate both the counter-culture and the establishment, and actually helping and promoting them along the way.

The Judeofascists warp and pervert everything they touch, and distort any kind of good into evil. Indeed, they distorted the entirety of post-WWII America and the Boomer generation itself.

Of course, the Boomers are going to pay for this crime against humanity (i.e. all of the Israel-first and neo-fascist Mideast wars), against Christianity, and against Western civilization, as the older and frailer they get, and the scarcer and scarcer resources get as a consequence of their devastating greed and moral corruption, the more resources will have to be confiscated or funneled away from them in order to ensure the future of the younger generations.

And where will all those Jewish predators they loved so much, and to whom they transferred so much moral authority and power be when the Boomers hit their staring-into-the-abyss moment?

Living luxuriously in Israel, or some overseas tropical paradise with all the stolen loot from plundered America.

There's a simple and eternal lesson there: Get in bed with the devil, you get burned.

*UPDATE*

I had an interaction with one critic who essentially said every generation sells out as it moves into the establishment or into an environment of more conservative domesticity, out of economic and familial imperative.

In all honestly, I agree that generational warfare isn't the way to go, but the fear of God needs to be put into these Boomers to shake them from their childish delusions that America is simply going through a temporary economic hiccup.

The Boomer rebellion back in the 60's and 70's could all be papered over and bought off with money-printing. America today is facing bankruptcy and a hollowed out economy, so the establishment can't get away with that anymore. Today, economics and material need are going to force Americans to throw the liberal fascists, neocons and Zionist thieves, plunderers and troublemakers overboard, right along with their expensive neo-fascist, Israel-first agenda.

The quicker that's done, the better the chances the country can be saved. If it's delayed much longer, we're facing totalitarianism and the crumbling of the U.S. in the same way the Soviet Union crumbled.

Is a vote for Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich a vote for yet another unfunded war of choice, this time with a nation, Iran, three times as large and populous as Iraq?

Mitt says that if elected he will move carriers into the Persian Gulf and “prepare for war.” Newt is even more hawkish. America should continue “taking out” Iran’s nuclear scientists — i.e., assassinating them — but military action will probably be needed.

Newt is talking up uber-hawk John Bolton for secretary of state.

Rick Santorum has already called for U.S.-Israeli strikes: “Either we’re going to stop them … or take the long term consequences of having a nuclear Iran trying to wipe out the state of Israel.”

But if Iran represents, as Bibi Netanyahu is forever reminding us, an “existential threat,” why does not Israel itself, with hundreds of nuclear weapons, deal with it?

Bibi’s inaction speaks louder than Bibi’s words.

He wants the Americans to do it.For the retired head of Mossad, Meir Dagan, calls attacking Iran “the stupidest thing I have ever heard of.” He means stupid for Israel.

Why? Because an Israeli attack would be costly in planes and pilots, and only set back Iran’s nuclear program. And such a pre-emptive strike would unify Iranians behind the regime.

Moreover, Israel would be inviting Tehran’s ally Hezbollah to rain down rockets on Israel, igniting another of the bloody Lebanon wars that Israel was desperate to end the last time.

As for the United States, the only way we could eliminate Iran’s nuclear program would be days of air and missile strikes.

Iran could retaliate by cutting off oil exports and mining the Strait of Hormuz, tripling the world price of oil, and hurling the European Union and United States into recession.

Iran could also turn Hezbollah loose on Americans in Lebanon and urge Shias to attack U.S. troops, diplomats and civilians in Bahrain, Iraq and Afghanistan, and here in the United States.

No one knows how this would end. A U.S.-Iran war could force us to march to Tehran to remove the Islamic regime and scour that huge country to ensure that it was shorn of weapons of mass destruction — for an Islamic regime that survived a U.S. war would be hellbent on acquiring the bomb to pay us back. Yet, we lack a large enough army to occupy Iran.

And why should thousands more Americans have to die or come home to be fitted for metal limbs so Israel can remain sole proprietor of a nuclear weapon from Morocco to Afghanistan?...

Are we being lied and stampeded into yet another war by the same propagandists who gave us the yellow-cake-from-Niger forgeries?

Bibi calls Mahmoud Ahmadinejad another Hitler and says we are all in 1939 again. But is this credible?

True, Ahmadinejad hosted a Holocaust conference featuring David Duke and said Israel should be wiped off the map, but he does not control Iran’s military, has lost favor with the ayatollah, and has been threatened with impeachment. Ahmadinejad is a lame duck with less than two years left in his term. Is mighty Israel afraid of this man?

Told that the IAEA said Iran was actively pursuing nuclear weapons, Ahmadinejad laughed: “The Iranian nation is wise. It won’t build two bombs against 20,000 (nuclear) bombs you (Americans) have.”...MORE...LINK-------------------------

Chris Moore comments:

Washington B.C. Neanderthals and Reptilians want their cake, and to eat it, too.

They want Israel to be nuclear-armed to the teeth, but they don’t want other Mideast nations to have the bomb. They want to send the U.S. military to stampede around the Mideast, and Israel to stamped around the Levant in a war for Zionism, the petro dollar, the fiat dollar, and against Islamic civilization, but they don’t want the Arabs or Muslims to raise a finger in response. They want to allow Israel to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians, but they want the Jews to sleep secure in their beds at night. They want to send Americans to fight and die in foreign lands for an elite-serving, fascist enterprise, but they themselves want to sleep in their beds securely at night, and pass themselves off as “the good guys.” They want to throw away billions on this fantastical pipe dream and destroy the futures of younger generations of Americans, yet they want to hold themselves up as responsible, upstanding leaders.

All of this is not only impossible, but a good recipe for mass domestic rebellion and the emergence of the guillotine on American soil…and they can’t come soon enough.

Except for dissent from Representative Ron Paul of Texas and (to a lesser extent) former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, the Republican presidential candidates blazed their way in a November 12 debate toward foreign policies where the United States would engage in two new Middle Eastern wars against Syria and Iran, re-institute the Bush Administration torture policy, abolish trials for terror suspects, and allow unlimited presidential assassinations.

New Wars Against Iran and SyriaMitt Romney came out for war against Iran at the beginning of the debate. "If all else fails," Romney told debate moderator and CBS News Anchor Scott Pelley in the South Carolina debate at Wofford College, "then of course you take military action. It is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon." Likewise, Romney sought war against Syria, suggesting "Of course it's time for the Assad dictatorship to end. And we should use covert activity."

Herman Cain told CBS moderator Scott Pelley that he wouldn't invade Syria, but would wage war against the country by funding a bloody insurgency instead: "I would not entertain military opposition. I'm talking about to help the opposition movement within the country."

Newt Gingrich also called for war against Iran in the form of "maximum covert operations to block and disrupt the Iranian program — including taking out their scientists, including breaking up their systems. All of it covertly," Gingrich added, to audience laughter: "All of it deniable." On Syria, Gingrich would likewise seek widespread "covert" war. Asked by National Journal Host Major Garrett if he would approve military assistance and covert smuggling, Gingrich replied: "I would actively approve taking those steps would which defeat his regime, which would probably be mostly covert."

Texas Governor Rick Perry didn't mention war against Iran, as he wasn't asked the question on it, but suggested that the United States "sanction the Iranian Central Bank right now and shut down that country's economy."

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum also sought war against Iran. "I proposed exactly the things that Herman and and Mitt Romney suggested, which was to give money to the rebel forces there to help the pro-democracy movement and to put tough sanctions in place."

On the other hand, Texas Congressman Ron Paul advocated following the U.S. Constitution on war, which he called "the old-fashioned way, the Constitution. You go to the Congress and find out if our national security is threatened. And I'm afraid what's going on right now is similar to the war propaganda that went on against Iraq."

TortureRepublican candidates also staked out clear positions in favor of torture — without calling it torture. Herman Cain said of waterboarding: "Yes, I would return to that policy. I don't see it as torture. I see it as an enhanced interrogation technique." (Cain also said "I'd keep Gitmo open," a reference to the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba where hundreds of detainees have been held without trial or formal charges for as long as nine years.) Michele Bachmann agreed, telling the audience that "If I were president, I would be willing to use waterboarding."

Ron Paul called waterboarding torture and said that torture "uncivilized" and "un-American." He also said that torture is "illegal under international law and under our law. It's also immoral. And it's also very impractical. There's no evidence that you really get reliable evidence."...

Ron Paul noted that Presidential assassinations have now included a 16-year-old boy — the son of al-Awlaki — and condemned "this whole idea that now we can be assassinated by somebody that we don't even like to run our medical care, and giving this power to the president to be the prosecutor, the executor, the judge and the jury. We better look at that carefully before you automatically endorse something like that."...MORE...LINK

From: The Armageddon NetworkHow the war party is ginning up war with Iran(AntiWar.com) -- by Justin Raimondo --

The War Party is bound and determined to drag us, kicking and screaming, into a military conflict with Iran – and they have constructed a vast network of agents inside both parties, and inside the government, to accomplish exactly that.

The nexus of this network is the government of Israel and its intelligence services, which is coordinating an increasingly frantic campaign to bring the Iran issue to a head. From all indications, it appears as if the goal is to ignite the conflict before the 2012 presidential elections.

This is not a covert conspiracy, but rather an open one: the Israelis have threatened, time and again, to take military action against Iran. They claim the Jewish state faces “another Holocaust,” and that Iran poses an “existential threat” to Israel’s very existence. The latest wrinkle is that officials in Tel Aviv reportedly told Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, on a recent visit to Israel, that they wouldn’t necessarily be informing the White House until after the Israelis had launched their fighter jets and missiles.

Perfectly understandable: After all, why should the Israelis – who drain us of $3.5 billion a year in “foreign aid” – give us a few minutes warning of Armageddon? Why should they care that the price of oil would immediately skyrocket to $200 a barrel, and make driving to work an economic impossibility? Such considerations are irrelevant, since every single major politician in America is pledged to maintain the one-sided “special relationship” at all costs. Yes, even at the cost of America’s economic demise, for the oil shock would send our already reeling economy into a tailspin – and it would be a long time before we hit bottom.

Of course, the Israelis may not want to pursue this course to the end: a parasite that kills its host is essentially committing suicide. So while this may be a subject of debate within the Israeli national security establishment, with senior military and intelligence officials disdaining Netanyahu’s attack plans as “the stupidest idea I ever heard,” in America no such discussion is allowed. Listening to the Republican frontrunner last Saturday night, at a “debate” devoted to foreign policy, Mitt Romney sounded as if he were running for President of Israel rather than US commander-in-chief:

“Well, let’s– let’s start back from there and let’s talk about where we are. This is, of course, President Obama’s greatest failing, from a foreign policy standpoint, which is he recognized the gravest threat that America and the world faces – and faced was a nuclear Iran and he did not do what was necessary to get Iran to be dissuaded from their nuclear folly. What he should have done is speak out when dissidents took the streets and say, ‘America is with you.’ And work on a covert basis to encourage the dissidents.”

What “dissidents” is Mitt Romney talking about? Surely not the Green movement, led by figures who have praised Iran’s pursuit of nuclear energy and oppose attempts by the West to stop it. Does Romney even know what he’s talking about? Probably not, but his advisers surely do, and indeed one in particular seems to have a very specific idea of which “dissidents” the Romney administration will be funding and otherwise encouraging.

Mitchell Reiss, president of Washington College in Maryland, and one of Romney’s top foreign policy advisers, has emerged as a spokesman for the Mujaheddin-e-Khalq (MEK), the so-called People’s Mujaheddin of Iran, a weird cult-like group [.pdf] of Iranian exiles generally despised by ordinary Iranians. MEK originated in the early days of the revolution that overthrew the Shah, and its cadres not only participated in the taking of the US embassy, which led to the hostage crisis of 1979, but also carried out assassinations against US diplomats and agents throughout the region. After losing out in the post-revolutionary struggle for power in Tehran, the group fled to Iraq, where they were succored for years by Saddam Hussein, who allowed them to set up military camps from which they conducted terrorist raids on Iran. MEK troops fought alongside the Iraqis in their war with Iran, and were used to ruthlessly suppress rebellions by Shi’ites in southern Iraq. After the US invasion, they were confined to their camp, where they remained a military “asset” in Washington’s ongoing campaign to destabilize Iran...

MEK claims it has foresworn terrorism, but a 2004 FBI report states that a “Los Angeles investigation has determined that the MEK is currently actively involved in planning and executing acts of terrorism.” US diplomatic and intelligence officials maintain the MEK “trained females at Camp Ashraf in Iraq to perform suicide attacks in Karbala.”

For these reasons, and more, the MEK and its numerous front organizations have remained on the US list of terrorist organizations, whose activities are proscribed in the United States. Romney aide Reiss is part of a campaign to get MEK delisted – an effort that is so lavishly funded one wonders where all the money is coming from. There’s no doubt where it’s going to, however: a long list of leading “experts” and prominent politicians in both parties and on both sides of the political spectrum have pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars in “speaking fees” handed out by an organization apparently flush with cash...

Dozens of prominent figures have been paid huge sums to shill for these former hostage-taking anti-American terrorists, including:

•Michael Mukasey •Ed Rendell •Andrew Card (another Romney adviser) •Gen. James Conway •Tom Ridge •Gen. Hugh Shelton •James Woolsey •Howard Dean •Rudy Giuliani •Porter Goss •Lee Hamilton •Michael Hayden •Bill Richardson •Louis Freeh •Gen. Peter Pace •Gen. Wesley Clark •Gen. Anthony Zinni And, of course, John Bolton. Even P.J. Crowley, who opposed the delisting campaign while at State – and who claims his speaking fee didn’t influence his speech – was lured by the smell of cold hard cash. “We’ve never seen this kind of money,” says Trita Parsi, of the National Iranian American Council. “At one conference with 10 speakers, if they average $50k a pop, that is half a million dollars just in speaker fees.”

Where is this largesse coming from – and why is it being allowed to influence the American political process if it comes from overseas?

The major coup claimed by the MEK is the revelation of Iran’s previously unknown nuclear facilities at Natanz, but it is widely known that this information was passed on to them by Israel’s intelligence agency: the Mossad and the MEK have a longstanding history of cooperation. The recent bombing at an Iranian missile base, which killed 21 Iranian soldiers, is being attributed to the MEK, and the Iranians charge the mysterious “terrorist” plot targeting the Saudi ambassador in Washington and supposedly planned by Iran was actually set up by the Rajavi cultists.

The Israel lobby is an octopus with many tentacles, of which MEK is merely one: they are all attached to the same body, however, and that is the government of Israel, and its intelligence services. If, in some alternative universe where Congress isn’t “Israeli-occupied territory” our lawmakers followed the money, I have no doubt the cash flow could be traced back to its source.

The results of such an investigation would hardly be shocking. Israel is waging an intense campaign to drag us into war on their behalf, and they aren’t trying to hide it. What they are intent on hiding, however, is the way in which our Congress, our public officials, and our political culture are being bought off by their proxies. We ship billions to Tel Aviv, and they ship it back to us in the form of propaganda and relentless pressure to bend the White House and Congress to their will...MORE...LINK